Type 1 Diabetes and Blog of the Week: Sweet as Candice
This is the start of a weekly series featuring blogs that focus on people’s (ongoing) experiences with specific diseases. Along with highlighting a blog each week, I will provide some background on the genetics of the disease in focus. If you have a blog you’d like me to feature or want to nominate someone else’s blog, please leave a comment below.
This week’s featured blog is Sweet as Candice: My Life with Type 1 Diabetes. Candice has had type 1 diabetes for 19 years and has recently decided to get an insulin pump to help regulate her blood sugar levels more precisely. It hasn’t been easy going, though, she has first had to quit smoking, visit a nutritionist, and try to control her blood sugars by watching what she eats.
Candice has reached out via her blog to help others by starting a Yahoo! Group, Diabetes Buddies, to match up people with type 1 diabetes so they can provide mutual support. She has also asked me to contribute a post during her Blogathon in support of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. She’ll start blogging every 30 minutes from 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time on August 6, 2005. Go on over and sponsor her!
~~~A Summary of the Genetics of Type 1 Diabetes~~~
Type 1 diabetes occurs when the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas are destroyed by the body’s own immune system. About 18 regions of the genome, labeled IDDM1 to IDDM18, have been associated with an increase in type 1 diabetes risk.
- IDDM1 - HLA genes that encode immune response proteins
- IDDM2 - insulin gene
- IDDM4 - genes for ZFM1 (zinc finger protein 162), FADD (Fas-associated death protein), and LRP5
- IDDM5 - SOD2 gene
- IDDM6 - gene associated with colorectal cancer (DCC), gene that encodes a zinc finger DNA binding domain (ZNF236), and a molecule that opposes apoptosis (bcl-2)
- IDDM7 - genes for NEUROD1, IGRP
- IDDM10 - GAD2 gene
- IDDM11 - genes for ENSA and SEL1L
- IDDM16 - gene that encodes for immunoglobulin heavy chain
- IDDM18 - ILB12 gene
- CTLA4 gene - regulates the immune system
- CD28 gene
- ICOS gene
Despite these and other candidate genes that have been associated with increased risk of type 1 diabetes, no gene therapy or gene-targeted drugs have been developed thus far. As more genes are discovered and their functions better understood, it will become possible to figure out exactly why some people have type 1 diabetes and to provide a cure, as well as prevent others from developing it in the first place.
For more detailed information, see The Genetic Landscape of Diabetes, NCBI
NB: Before this series was conceived, I mentioned the blog teb’s page in connection with my post on metastatic melanoma.
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POSTED IN: Featured Genetics and Health Blogs
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2 opinions for Type 1 Diabetes and Blog of the Week: Sweet as Candice
anthromom
Aug 6, 2005 at 12:12 pm
Hi Lei.
Somebody left a question about your article on my blog. She wants to know how many of the diabetes genes you need to have to get diabetes. Would love it if you would run over there and answer her.
Candice
Genetics and Health » New Undefined HLA Gene for Type 1 Diabetes
Sep 5, 2006 at 6:53 am
[…] Type 1 diabetes has a strong genetic component. Of the many chromosomal regions thus far implicated in the development of the disease, the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region with its more than 220 genes is under intense scrutiny. Researchers at the Barbara Davis Center of Childhood Diabetes have identified a gene in the HLA region that apears to increase the risk of type 1 diabetes by 80 percent. […]
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